Burt Cohen

The public is way ahead of politicians on this. Frightened of looking “soft on defense,” elected members of both parties duck and cover when polls show wide support for giving a serious haircut to the wild and woolly lands of

We traditional Americans are doing what we can to take on oligarchy, plutocracy, and patriarchy.But our effectiveness is limited if we do not figure out the whys and hows of what our guest Melanie Joy calls “powerarchy.” Her new book

Conventional Democratic Party wisdom is that McGovern lost to Nixon because he was too liberal, and as a result of that belief, ever since that loss party insiders have trended steadily to the right. But if today’s measuring tools had

It’s not only Trump who is pushing cruelty. Since right wing Republicans have very successfully gained control over the third branch of government, the judicial branch, we should expect to see many examples of cruelty dictating decisions by the Supreme

No question: today’s biggest unsolved problems came at the hands of the so-called centrists of both parties. Historian and author Professor Andrew Bacevich argues that while of course Trump must be removed, the constant focus of impeachment is a way

Across Europe tens of millions of refugees are living in horrible conditions, as countries erect razor wire to keep them out. Our guest today Tim Horgan of the World Affairs Council argues it is best to keep people where they

It’s become “a nearly despotic branch of government.” But wasn’t the Supreme Court created to be a check on the powers of the executive and legislative, making certain they adhere to the Constitution? Author Thom Hartmann is a progressive national

Did Trump mean to be anti-Semitic with his insistence that Jewish Americans who vote Democratic are disloyal? According to our first guest, civil justice advocate and attorney Mark Bello, without question yes, Trump is anti-Semitic. And he says Trump is

We take democracy for granted, but as author Richard C.Lyons tells it, democracy is a recessive gene. Tyranny is much more able to dominate. Tyranny? What does that ancient word even mean? In his new book: The DNA of Democracy,

Could Trump get something right? Retired US Army officer and prolific writer of military policy analysis Danny Sjursen compares how the brass In Washington sees Afghanistan versus the empirical knowledge from people on the ground. The commanders see Afghanistan as

What keeps Trump was his false version of “Roses.” An uplift from everyday dullness. Looking at the upcoming election, our guest today Professor Ed Simon argues that “those that will be the most successful will be those that speak of

He’s often said to be England’s Trump. And many hope his reign as Prime Minister of the UK will be the shortest in British history. How much damage will Boris Johnson do to formerly great Britain? The chaos is astounding.

Melting polar ice caps is great for the rapacious oil and gas industry. Trump denying climate change and wanting to buy Greenland is actually part of the logic of what drives our military policy. Our guest on this show journalist

When Nixon lied, it was an earthquake. Now Trump lies many times a day. Does it matter? Why is it that evangelicals remain solid with Trump? How is it that evangelicals no longer care about his personal immorality? Do Christian

Did you ever imagine we would have actual concentration camps in America? What would you have done in Germany in the 1930s? Never Again means never again. On the first half, Sara Caplan talks about the new grassroots movement called

Trump is not the first. Author of many history books Adam Hochschild writes: “The last time we had anything similar from Washington was almost exactly 100 years ago and it, too, involved a flood of angry rhetoric and a fear

On the first half of the podcast, from Barcelona Spain, professor of political philosophy and journalist Santiago Zabala reports on the rise of the new European nationalistic fascism. He answers these questions: What is it? Why is it happening? How

It’s not perfect. Much as we’d prefer to see the 1787 Constitution as a rock solid always-dependable foundation, our guests argue there are fault lines that we can not see but are always there. In their new book Fault Lines

If America’s founders saw where we are today,thy might have thought King George won the war. Instead of democratic control over the common good, a government of by and for the people, today it’s an 18th century style oligarchy. In

It’s a long and oscillating history: America welcoming immigrants and telling them to go home. As Washington Post senior editor Marc Fisher explains, it didn’t start with Trump: “there’s a long history of rejecting “different” Americans:” Eastern European, Irish, German,

If we criticize Trump, we don’t love America. If we learn history, we are disloyal. You know that’s what a lot of people on the right (in larger numbers than we’d imagined) are claiming. But what is Patriotism? Does the

Safe comfortable myth is so soothing, but art, by its nature, is often about challenging the viewer. You may have heard of the controversy about large Depression-era murals on the walls of San Francisco’s George Washington High School. After 80

Gleefully ferreting out deception and laughing at it. An overall spirit of irreverence arising out of the rigid white-bread conformity of the 1950s, Mad Magazine has published its last all-new edition. Today we talk with national affairs correspondent for The

President Reagan’s former solicitor general and Harvard law professor Charles Fried calls it a “Day of Sorrow for American Democracy:” the day the US Supreme Court issued its 5 to 4 decision abandoning protection of one person one vote. In

Of course Iran shot down a US spy drone. Any country would do the same. And Trump’s intention for greater tension is achieved. On this segment, legal scholar Marjorie Cohn argues that Iran had a legal right to shoot down

We’ve all seen it in recent years: the leadership of the DNC and the DCCC dictating policy and acceptable “centrist” positions for their chosen candidates. And how well has that worked out? Toward correcting that hierarchy’s grip on the party

With much of state and federal government in their pockets, the interface between the tech trusts and the infrastructure enables concentration and nearly unimaginable control by the tech giants. As a result they are able to over-charge customers between $40

(Please note: this is a corrected audio version) The force behind Trump, the real power in the Republican led senate is Mitch McConnell, who calls himself the grim reaper for killing good bills. Our guest in this discussion, Michael Winship,

Well into the 21st century, everything has changed except our way of thinking, which remains rooted in 19th century values which unnecessarily hold us back. Millions of people hate their jobs and are relegated to living as passive consumers when

Many Iranians are more west-friendly than others in the Middle East, yet we demonize them the most. Retired US Army Major Danny Sjursen has the inside scoop on American military policy toward Iran and here talks about those realities: The